31 Comments

I remember when Muqtada vowed to fight the Americans to his last drop of blood. Then he was wounded at Najaf in ‘04 and promptly ran like a scared little girl over to Iran where he continued to run his mouth.

Just what makes large swaths of the Iraqi population follow a fat, sweaty coward with mossy teeth remains a mystery to me.

“Just what makes large swaths of the Iraqi population follow a fat, sweaty coward with mossy teeth remains a mystery to me.”

Funny, I think the same thing about Michael Moore’s fans.

He’s running on daddy’s nickel. Pops was a genuine martyr offed by Saddam. Fat Boy is a lame ugly little rabble rouser.

O/T Overheard on Bob Dylan theme time radio show
on XM radio

The sixties hippie band, Country Joe and the Fish, were named after a nickname for Stalin(
Country Joe) and Mao’s dictum about revolutionaries being fish swimming in the sea of humanity.
Dylan’s comment- “No wonder they never had a hit song.”
A little bit of arcane knowledge to brighten your day.

I believe that ol-bean teeth was delt with correctly. He was allowed to live. He was allowed to make noise. He was allowed to keep some of his dignity. And by doing so he avoided having his followers slaughtered by the US.

We got what we wanted - Mahdi army disbanded. The Iraqi government got what they wanted - to show the population that they were in control. Looks like a win/win to me.

In a way the US needed ol-bean teeth. We could frame him in Iraqi eyes as a bad guy and we could squash him at our leisure if things got out of hand. Sadr was a “useful fool” that we leveraged to help reign in some of the wild-eyed clerics.

A new addition to “Why ain’t they had a bullet in the brain pan?” list:

1. A.Q. Kahn.
2. Mookie.

I’ve often thought that political correctness is linked to the tenure system. Tenure was designed to keep professors from being fired for speaking their mind, but also creates a situation where the cost of getting sacked, for most faculty, is extremely high. The result is, ironically, that norms like PC are more easily enforced because the enforcer wields a big stick.

I teach at two universities (Rice and Stanford) on an adjunct basis and I feel like I have more freedom to speak my mind because I don’t have tenure. If they fire me, I’ll be sad but my life will go on. My freedom of speech is protected by my freedom to leave. The cost, of course, is that they can fire me at will. Seems to me like a small cost to bear.

This state of affairs is analogous to defined-benefit pension plans. Employees who are 17 years into a 20 year vesting are trapped because it is too expensive for them to leave. Supervisors, knowing this, exert much more power over those employees and can push them around with impunity. Over time, the organization evolves into a pretty lousy place to work because adverse selection creates a cadre of lousy bosses, which makes the workplace more unattractive, which tends to select people who will become lousy bosses, etc. So, the original noble intention - funding retirement - becomes perverted into a system of imprisonment.

In other words, there is no free lunch.

L3

I was one of those that thought Sadr would look a lot better with his head on a pike. Cooler heads prevailed of course and Mookie got to keep his. He is laying down his arms to focus on “politics and civics”. Somehow I envision him as being the Ted Kennedy of the Iraqi parliament. I’m sure that Maliki will have preferred him as a “freedom fighter” or at least at a pikes peak.

Great photgraph by the way, do they have a National Inquirer in Iraq?

Roderick Reilly said,

“I’ve always maintained that there are limits to the powers and endurance of fanaticism, and events in Iraq and elsewhere have proven me right.

What kind of petty, twisted, resentful minds does it take to: 1) Deny that U.S. military power was necessary to affect this outcome in Iraq, 2)or that, similarly, to deny that the war was more than half-won militarily in Vietnam because of Tet, 3) first insist that the Iraqi Army was a formidable foe in the lead-up to the Gulf War, and then turn around and call them “rag-tag” and “3rd-World” when they lost decisively, or 4) that no credit should be given to Reagan and George H. W. Bush for the collapse of the Soviet Union.“

The cost, of course, is that they can fire me at will.

THey’d better have a cast iron reason for firing you, and your can sue their skanky butts for illegal termination. Coupla million dollar settlements for making stupid firing decisions can really make a dent in a school’s football budget.

So where is Mookie headed to, to rest his weary head? I thought Iran didn’t love him any more.

Doesn’t anybody recall the Black Panther Party, with its school lunch and other social service programs, political coverage for a murderous street gang? Has anyone out there heard of Hamas: a non-governmental turned quasi-governmental social service delivery system, replete with food and school programs, that also happens to fire missiles (or at least lacks political will to control some of its adherents who love to fire missiles) into Israeli neighborhoods?

I doubt very much that the Mahdi Army will be disbanded, or could be disbanded, even by al Sadr’s order. (There is always a potential rival to lead a violent splinter, a little more hothead than the erstwhile hothead who’s now looking to legitimate himself, is there not?) No, I suspect Sadr is merely changing his business model, a shrewd move which will make it politically still more difficult to control “charitable” donations from within the U.S. and other countries, which will continue to buy explosives. Boys and girls, money is fungible, and accountability is something that barely exists in certain of the G-7 countries, let alone in the Moslem world. Let’s not forget these things.

One expects sentimentalists to fall for this sort of thing, but I’m surprised to see the Wall Street Journal susceptible to it. Pity.

Oh I don’t think for one moment that old Moqtada has decided to turn a new leaf. But he has decided to get out of the high intensity conflict business. His boys ain’t up to it. Now if I had my druthers, I’d encourage a little competition in the rackets over there; give a few of his lieutenants ideas about how they’re destined for bigger things. Divide and conquer. And maybe Sadr City will finish up with a couple of hundred little petty neighborhood kingpins, any of which can be taken down to the station house if they overstep. If Moqtada is lucky he might end his career running a saloon and a laundromat.

Thomas Drew - If al-Sadr does return to a Ted Kennedy-like role (ht: Annoy Mouse) in the Iraqi parliament, he will effectively be offering himself as a hostage to his own good behaviour. If JAM starts playing up again, he’d better a) run for Iran again (permanently this time), or b) get fitted for prison drabs and pack a toothbrush (although that may well be optional in his case).

I can imagine killer ads mixing the best of Mr. Carter and Mr. O., and, say, Mr. M dressed-up as the Church Lady.

Inflate your tires!
(better yet, run on the metal rims)
Put on an extra sweater.
The nation is going to #@!! on a tide of selfish-interest (clearly markets don’t work).
Your government will make your choices for you, in your best interest, because we are the one, ahh, together.

Ari,
Algore will run spots for him imploring them to make those sweaters from recycled drier lint reclaimed the Sheeite Washerteria.

“from”

Dear trangbang68,

Thanks for the post. Like his primary sources in his younger days, Ezra Pound and T.S. Elliott, Dylan has always been closer to Edmund Burke than to those who tried to coopt him to the antiwar left. They listened on the surface and never really got him. His message, if he ever consciously had one, was not the revolutionary camaraderie of the left but rather a reaction to the troglodytes of tradition who sought to retain their position by holding back the American voyage. I’m old. I was there at the beginning. An acolyte of Ayn Rand who thinks that Eisenhower was a great President, who cast his first vote for Goldwater, I saw him, and still do, as the great iconoclast.

Regards,
Roy

“An article from The Times Online suggests that the environmental “movement” may already be more about compulsory style than science. …. all environmentalists … don’t want the working classes to have any fun, go on foreign holidays or buy cheap clothes. … ‘nutbag ecologists’ are the overindulged rich who have nothing better to do with their lives than talk about hot air and beans.”
————

That is one explanation why ecology policies continue to be a major political issue. Another explanation might be that people are concerned about ecological systems being damaged.

Which explanation is better? Is one of the explanations silly?

Mike,

The two possibilities are not really exclusionary. We probably do have some of both positions in the environmental movements, the one taking advantage of the other in one direction. Guess where Pelosi, Moore, and Gore etc. fit in.

Nutbag ecologists who don’t want ordinary people to have anything nice explains it.

If Al Gore and company really believed any of what they spout, their lives would reflect it. No mansions, no jetting around, no massive Dr. Evil Houseboats, no $30,000 a month electricity bills, no private jets, no fleets of gas guzzlers.

Since they don’t believe it, I don’t either.

The Iraq War has ended. The Iraq Government is established and will govern in accordance with the Iraq Constitution. The Sunni population has conceded to this arrangement.

There was a time when there was a reason for the Shiites to have militias, but that time has ended.

We here might perceive this development as a victory for some and as a defeat for others. I think rather that most people’s attitudes have evolved and coalesced. Now there is a consensus to move forward together as a peaceful democracy, recognizing the difficulties and also the advantages of that path.

Most Iraqis will claim they always preferred to move along that path, even though there were several years when practically everyone was compelled to pause and fight instead. A few Iraqis might admit they they had been wrong before and have changed their minds, and all of them too should be welcomed as fellow successful survivors, not as defeated wrong-doers.

Great point Whiskey. None of the “players” can demonstrate that they feel strongly enough about the impending Heat Death that they follow their own dictates to the common folk.

Mike S - I guess we have finally arrived at the “Kumbayah” moment, yes? Well the “time for militias” didn’t just end all by itself. Someone was there to make it all possible.

Roy Lofquist, I guess I was there from the beginning too. I saw Dylan in 1966 in one of his early electric shows at Kleinham’s Music Hall in Buffalo. I agree he has been over analyzed and
often claimed by camps he had no part in. He is just an American original like Johnny Cash singing songs about this great and strange land we live in. These guys’ body of work is breathtaking story telling .Dylan’s piece,
“Workingman’s Blues#2″ off the album Modern Times
is like an elegy or funeral dirge for the old mill towns dying in post industrial America.

trangbang68,

I never knew that about Country Joe. Thanks. You might like their “Section 43″ a great instrumental. As to their real politics: it was all about getting chics “Happiness Is A Porpoise Mouth”. They were a Berkeley band and very popular during the “era”.

Wretchard et. al.,

I hear from a lot of friends that they are not looking forward to four years of lectures on race either.

Let me also add that their anti-war song “Viet Nam” was a great hit among the troops in “Nam.

krontekag:
“I guess we have finally arrived at the “Kumbayah” moment, yes? Well the “time for militias” didn’t just end all by itself. Someone was there to make it all possible.”
———-

I am very optimistic. The Iraqi Government security forces have established their presence and control everywhere in Iraq. This marks the beginning of a new period of peace and progress. Kumbayah!!

This success was made possible by US military forces and Iraqi Government security forces risking their lives and fighting for a democratic government of Iraq, where every citizen has a legal and real right to participate in the country’s decision-making processes. Kumbayah!!

Country Joe and the Fish’s “Feel Like I’m Fixing to Die Rag” is one of the greatest songs of the late 60s.
I still laugh when I hear it.
What a hoot.
But it sure didn’t get air time on Top 40 stations.
Give me an “F”…
His concerts were a buzz, including the bags of joints with stars and stripes cigarette papers thrown into the audiences at the free concerts in Golden Gate Park.

Surely no one believes Sadr is out to sing Kumbaya!?
He’s setting up a brand new Hezbollah for Iraq, funded trained & fuly supported by Iran. This is the Hamas & Hezbollah model, radical anti west Islamist organizations which cloak & cover themselves in ’social’ & ‘political’ causes to appeal to suckers in the west. So far because of the West’s idiocy and naivete this has worked out fantastic for Iran, they now have not one but two full Islamic mini states in Gaza & Lebanon. Why tinker with what works.. They have at least another 6 months or so to milk the queen of suckers Dr. Rice before an even bigger apologist hits the scence.

Just like the United States needed some blood-letting to resolve issues left unresolved during the founding, perhaps the Iraqis needed the same before realizing the value of collective effort. The question is will it last? We can only hope.

M Simon,
I definitely was a fan of the Fish in those spacey days. The song ” Who am I?” was a poignant existential plea.” I’ll survive” on the same album was a sweet little love song. Joe Mcdonald was a red diaper baby but I think the acid added a touch of humor to the grim Marxism he could have represented. A similar band ,though lots more edgy was the MC5 out of Detroit. Those boys could start a mini riot any time they played. Ah the loopy 60’s and early 70’s.
“I feel like I’m fixin’ to die” was immensely popular among the grunts in Viet Nam, at least the ones who were dabbling in the youth culture. I guess they would be the Sgt. Elias faction in “Platoon” . “We gotta get out of this place” by the Animals was another big hit as well as Mary Hopkin’s “Those were the days”

Like Mookie, Obama will still have his mental militias after he loses this election. Look at Al Gore’s minions, they see nothing at all wrong with Gore using the language of science while absoluting denying the truth-seeking process of science.

Science is one of the few, if not the only, method humans have devised to ascertain the Truth of the certain questions. Unlike less physical arguments of Logic, science is based on the open cycle of Observation, Hypothesis, Experiment, Refinement of the Theory - ad infinitum. Al Gore refuses debate, he refuses any step past his only unsupported hypotheses, and his followers believe this is right and true because they are following a religion, not science. And their ultimate goal is command and control of society, not truth or science or mutual agreement.

Just yesterday I noticed that the myth still lives (it was an AP story I think) that Mookie’s “ceasefire” was instrumental to the success of the surge.

As for Country Joe, or whatever the lead singer’s name is, I saw on a Janis Joplin documentary that he stood her up on a date one night and it sent her into a tizz. It’s strange to think that in the crazy times of the Sixties somebody like Janis would even have “dates” and someone would stand her up. Sounds so pedestrian, so normal….

As for the the “Gimme an F!” song, I recommend it for all karaoke parties. The crowd always joins in very enthusiastically. “What’s that spell?”

Janis had been stood up the night she OD’d. I don’t remember by whom, but she was depressed about it.